Puff Pastry- Samosas and Jam puffs.

I have used puff pastry a few times this week. And it's vegan!

So first of all. I made samosas for dinner tonight and they turned out great. Usually they would be made with filo pastry but the puff pastry is a lot easier to use. They turned out extremely good. I had never made them before. To make the filling, what you need is ( I don't give any mesaurements really as you can have as little or as much as you want:

But aproxameltly:

-A good handful of diced butter nut squash

-A good handful of diced carrots

-'' '' '' red onion

I baked these together in olive oil until soft.

Meanwhile:

-Blanche a handful of chopped cauliflour, Peas and pea string things.. (?) hah

- Chop some chilli and a few mushrooms and spinach.

-In a sauce pan add oil, 2 teaspoons of curry powder, 1 teaspoon of coriander and cumin seeds.

When the carrots, onion and squash are finished cooking, add everything into the saucepan and stir for a while until everything is coated.

I had falafels and some left over veg curry so I broke up some falafel into it and added a couple teaspoons of the curry to moisten it up.

I cut out about 4 large diamond shape in the rolled out pastry placed some of the mixture to one half and then folded over. Then wet the pastry a little and popped into the oven for about 20 mins.

And for the left over pastry!! Squish it all together and roll it back out flat. Cut little triangle and circle shapes out and fill with jam or chocolate or jam and peanut butter. These tasted so good!

Lemon Buttercream Cupcakes by Sweet Vegan

So I finally got stuck into these cookbooks. I've only managed one recipe so far and that's the Lemon Buttercream Cupcakes from the book 'Sweet Vegan' by Emily Mainquist.

So first of all, I found the mixture to be extremely doughy. They were like bread like and not as sweet as I would of liked them to be. I guess as the recipe calls for brown sugar. Can anybody tell me if it's essential to use brown sugar as the majority of recipes use it. I would like to maybe half it and replace one half with caster to make them a bit sweeter. As for the doughy concern, I guess it's down to the use of 390g of flour! That's a lot. I think next time, I am going to half the recipe.

I found the butter cream to be lovely but didn't use the one given in the recipe as it involved 225g of butter, and thats' way to much! So I stuck to a previous one I've used. I used soya butter and it tasted grand!

And of course, I ate the majority of them!

ps. If you have any recipes that result in light fluffy cupcakes, PASS IT ON!

Extremely chunky vegan apple and berry crumble

Crumble with a hint of coconut.

I got a great recipe of a friend for a apple and berry crumble pie. She brought me a slice of it and it was great.

You need a shortcrust pastry base for the pie.

For the apple and berry filling: 350g cooking apple (shreded)

150g raspberries

125g blueberries

100g sugar

I stewed all this together with a drop of water until it reduced.

For the crumble:  
       100g (vegan) butter

100g caster sugar

25g desecated coconut

250g plain flour

This crumble is nice and chunk so make little molds with the crumble and place it on top of the berry mix. The coconut really adds to it to, I highly recommend it!

Another summer cake and macaroons

I made another tall, sweet cream filled and summer berry cake for a little cat party! I made one chocolate sponge and one vanilla and cut them both in half, resulting in 4 halfs!

Chocolate Macaroons.

I have always wanted to try make these but thought they looked really complicated. After my friend made them and said they were easy, I gave it a shot.

I used this recipe- http://www.followmefoodie.com/2010/12/parisian-macaroon-macaron-recipe-from-stuart%E2%80%99s-bakery/

They were pretty simple to make and taste so yummy!